La Dictée

The main theme of this week was les insectes (insects) with the first graders. They learned that insects have two antenna, six legs, and three body parts: the head, thorax, and abdomen. Since the immersion program has no set curriculum per se, the students get to learn about bugs in English!

As the school year has progressed, I have observed how the first graders are being trained for their future classes. The teacher has started to include more dictée (dictation) activities in her lessons. The teacher might have the students take out their whiteboards, and then have me say aloud sight words (common words that students should easily recognize, like "I", "a", "my") or an easy sentence. The students then have to write the words or sentence on their whiteboard for us to check. During a later part of the lesson, students would practice writing new vocabulary or sentences in their English notebook. The students will complete many more dictation exercises as part of their education in the years to come.

In general, I would argue that French schools love dictées. As language assistants, we are constantly told that we are only suppose to provide oral support and activities in class, not reading or writing support. The French value a trained ear that understands the subtleties of oral expression.

In other news, snow has officially arrived in Nancy this week...